Mounting internal volume via UMS

[SamsLembas]

I had this same problem in Gingerbread, but was hoping it would go away with ICS. It did not.

I am accustomed to mounting Android devices as USB Mass Storage devices for file transfers. MTP is a mess, particularly when dealing with non-media files, and I have no desire to use that. However, the TPS seems to simply not support UMS. When I plug the device into my computer (under both Windows and Linux), the device prompts me to either enter charge-only mode or MTP mode-- no UMS option.

Has anyone figured out what is up with this? Is there some technical barrier that caused Lenovo to disable UMS? How am I *supposed* to be transfering files?

[MrPeter1985 Guru]

What Format is your devices?
It will not work with NTFS format.

[sobrado]

On Honeycomb it was possible mounting the external SD card on Linux and BSD systems in the same way as any other USB drive (the only requirement was typing the password on the slate before mounting), however the internal SD card was not reachable. On Ice Cream Sandwich it seems that support for UMS has just dissapeared (and this one is not a problem unique to the ThinkPad slate).

As you are using both Windows and Linux my advice is installing an sshd(8) app on the slate, SSH support should be standard on Android, and an sftp(1) client on Windows. Far from being perfect but it works, and you will have access to both internal and external SD cards.

As you, I do not like MTP. Hope this workaround will help you.

[SamsLembas]

I see no filesystem options or information in any of the menus.

I did, however, discover a workaround:

Go to Settings->Storage. Click the menu icon on the top right of the screen and select "USB Computer Connection." Change "Connect As" to "Camera (PTP)".

This allows you to access the tablet via Photo Transfer Protocol. Contrary to what the name might suggest, this allows transfering arbietrary files to and from the device, and I was successfully able to do so using gphoto2. The downside is that you can only touch the DCIM and Pictures folders.

It is downright pitiful that I have to jump through these hoops to get files on and off my device, but at least I can do so at all :/ 

[Lens_flare]

Sorry to say, but honeycomb and ics are both have only MTP support which google manifested as "ease of use solution" against EVIL() vendors which are just restricting memory needed for OS.

As I know, only CM9 have mass storage support on OS level.

[sobrado]

No, Honeycomb had USB mass storage support, on the ThinkPad slate at least. I used it quite a few times to transfer files between the tablet and my desktop through an USB cable. Support for UMS has been removed on ICS. It is not Lenovo's fault, it is the way Google has changed Android.

[sobrado]

Hi SamsLembas,

had you read my post about using an SSH daemon on the tablet?

[Lens_flare]

>>Honeycomb had USB mass storage support, on the ThinkPad slate at least.
on thinkpad and slates which also have sd/micro sd support. but it was done a custom way.

[sobrado]

Agreed, as I said it only worked on the external SD card. But at least we had UMS support. It seems that lack of UMS support on ICS is a known issue on other tablets too, there are other Android devices affected by lack of this protocol. This fact has been noted on other forums.

[SamsLembas]

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sobrado wrote:
Hi SamsLembas,

had you read my post about using an SSH daemon on the tablet?

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As far as I am concerned that is a terrible solution. Forces me to put traffic over a wifi network when I have a usb connection up anyway and opens the tablet to potential security vulnerabilities in the sshd.